


Snowmelt

by Kizulu



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Christmas, Contest Entry, F/M, Gen, I have no idea what I'm doing, Kate Cary's Longest Night oneshot, Snow, Spotpaw is not happy about any of this, Stempaw has never met a cat he couldn't talk the ears off of, Until she is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28712334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizulu/pseuds/Kizulu
Summary: Head filled with Graystripe’s wintertide tales, Stempaw ropes Spotpaw into the decoration adventure of a lifetime. Or at least a leaf-bare.
Relationships: Spotfur/Stemleaf (Warriors)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12





	Snowmelt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KatieK101](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieK101/gifts).



On any other leaf-bare day, Spotpaw would have finished her apprentice duties and then retreated to the apprentices’ den for a good long nap. The fact that the Clan had woken up to a thick blanket of snow had only solidified this decision—she was going on the dawn patrol, hunting for her Clan, and then she was _done._ Nothing else, zip zilch zero, no thank you Squirrelflight, she would _not_ be volunteering for any extra duties, not even if StarClan themselves came down and asked her. It was cold and wet, and no matter how blue the sky was, it was _dreary_. Because of the snow, if you didn’t manage to get that, Flypaw. Yes, I do think you’ve the brain of a hare.

...Anyway. That would be what Spotpaw would do with a normal snowfall, but… not this one. Apparently (or at least according to Rosepetal and Leafshade, who were certifiably The Worst Mentors Ever), she needed to step up and help out. And by that they meant _look after Stempaw, won’t you? He’ll find his death in the territory alone_. And Spotpaw, fool as she was, had agreed.

No, she does not have a weakness for Stempaw. Shut _up_ , Snappaw. You too, Hollytuft. You’re not clever with your whole _I-don’t-speak-much-so-you-have-to-listen-to-me-when-I-do_ shtick. It’s annoying.

 _Clearly_ —and no matter what her siblings say, _especially_ Hollytuft—it’s her selfless sense of duty to her Clan that has landed her halfway to SkyClan territory, following a tom whose white patches and sheer enthusiasm were as bright as the sun reflecting off the snow.

And clearly, it’s her selfless sense of friendshipness ( _note to self, ask Cinderheart for a better word_ ) that has landed her in the midst of one of Stempaw’s admittedly-passionate monologues.

“—so glad you finally decided to get out of the camp. It’s so stuffy in there, don’t you think? They actually _cleared the snow_ off the paths, as if it was a true hardship to walk over it. Squirrelflight made me help! Can you imagine? Removing something so beautiful? But I have an idea for tonight, Spotpaw, and so help me StarClan, we’re going to make...”

Spotpaw does not want to listen anymore. Spotpaw is chilly. Spotpaw is absolutely, _bitterly_ cold, and she has a pelt thicker than all of her WindClan-leaning siblings’. Spotpaw has snow clinging to all of her legs despite her best efforts to the contrary. Spotpaw is _not happy_ with this arrangement, not one bit. Stempaw, for his part, seems entirely unaffected by the cold, despite his thin fur. This is an outrage akin to the time Flypaw tricked her into eating a spider. _Eughhh_.

“...don’t you think, Spotpaw? There’s plenty of beautiful things to use in the forest, even without flowers. You—”

“Stempaw,” Spotpaw interrupts seriously, her eyes raking over her companion’s lithe frame. “It’s like you were born in WindClan, your pelt is so short. How are you not freezing?”

“Wintertide spirit?” Stempaw suggests merrily, prancing around Spotpaw in dizzying circles. He does not seem at all affected by the interruption, which… is probably because cats usually _have_ to talk over him to get anything done. “The fact that I’m not moving like a mouse caught in maple sap?”

Spotpaw groans. It sounds exaggerated to her own ears, but she feels entitled to a little exaggeration. While her littermates are making nests in the nice, warm apprentices’ den for Ivypool’s kits, she’s been roped into some grand, wet, StarClan-forsaken _freezing_ adventure. “There’s ice crusted in my paw pads,” she complains. “I can’t feel my tail.”

“But isn’t it beautiful?” Stempaw makes a wide gesture with his obnoxiously ginger tail, indicating the snow-covered ferns and icy branches, weighed lower and lower until the forest almost looked foreign.

“No,” Spotpaw shoots back, shaking one paw and then the next, “it’s awful. It’s no prey and cold patrols as far as the eye can see.”

Stempaw has the gall to look offended even as he bounds confidently through another drift, which makes a valiant attempt to swallow him whole. “Oh, cheer up, Spot,” he chirps. “There are worse places to be.”

“Name one.”

“RiverClan territory?”

Spotpaw has to give him that one. Reluctantly. “But this is _mousebrained_ ,” she complains. “We don’t even have a hunting mission. This is _entirely_ _voluntary_.” She arches her back to avoid a particularly snowy fern and weaves around ice-encrusted bracken with a grace she’d never be caught dead displaying in greenleaf. It shouldn’t matter, and realistically it doesn’t because only her ears are dry at this point, but she’s not about to invite _more_ snow into her pelt. “Can we go back to camp now?”

Stempaw shakes his head eagerly. “No way, Spotpaw! Didn’t you hear Graystripe? Going _on_ and _on_ about how they used to hang up holly branches and eat winter hares and weave berries and feathers into the dens and play games and tell stories and…”

She hadn’t meant to allow his decorative fantasies to leave camp walls, Spotpaw will later swear (once they’re being chewed out for bringing deathberries into camp as decoration—how was _she_ supposed to know what they looked like when _Leafpool herself_ refused to go near them?), but she tunes out the alarm calls in her head in favor of concentrating on placing her paws exactly where his had been. It’s a less cold and wet affair that way, at least.

She definitely could’ve been curled up in her nest right now, nest-making be damned, but instead… here she is. And _okay_ , voice of Hollytuft in her head, so she likes the tom well enough—he’s handsome, and kind, and generous, and sweet, and she needs to stop thinking about his good qualities before she actually starts to _enjoy_ this outing—but the harebrained tom somehow, for some inexplicable reason, _loves_ the snow.

(Snow is _terrible_ )

(She is not alone in this opinion)

(Stempaw is alone in his)

“...go _ice sliding_ , Spotpaw, can you believe it? And eat honey! From Yellowfang’s stor—” Stempaw’s voice finally cuts off when he finally stumbles into a drift too deep, even his tufted ears disappearing underneath fresh powder.

“ _Stempaw_!” Spotpaw stops short, but she doesn’t even have time to be properly horrified that he’s finally, actually been eaten by a drift before he’s popping back up, shaking snow off his whiskers.

“Wow! Oh, that was _awesome_. D’ya think I could convince Plumstone to do this with me? She and Eaglewing and Shellfur think they’re _so_ grown-up just because they didn’t get greenleaf-greencough. But Plummy can’t resist throwing a moss ball around here and there still, so she might do it.” Stempaw is on his paws now, shaking clumps of snow from his pelt in a manner that makes Spotpaw think he wouldn’t mind so much if they stayed.

“Plumstone’s busy trying to wheedle an apprentice out of Bramblestar,” Spotpaw mopes, knocking a particularly icy chunk off of Stempaw’s back. It takes a few ginger hairs with it, and the brief flash of misery on his face is enough to force a reluctant purr from her throat.

“Like she’s not barely older than the rest of us,” Stempaw huffs. “If she gets an apprentice I’m eating my tail. Or hers.”

“You’d be choking on fur for a week,” Spotpaw replies absently. There’s a cardinal in the tree above them; if she managed to take it down, she could line her nest in the bright red feathers. _Cheery_ , she thinks to herself idly. _Leaf-bare needs cheery._

Stempaw sees it too, and his jaw works like he’s going to exclaim, but luckily Rosepetal’s finally gotten _tactical silence_ through to him and he stops short, making small bouncing motions and a series of complicated tail gestures instead.

Spotpaw rolls her eyes, fond despite herself, and heaves herself up the maple. The bird-catching itself is a simple affair after that—she’s not the best bird hunter in the apprentices’ den for nothing—but Stempaw cheers loudly anyway, startling two blackbirds from a young elm.

“Are you ever silent?” Spotpaw laughs around her bird, scrambling inelegantly down the tree to join him.

“Red’s a pretty color with your fur,” Stempaw says instead of answering, and then stiffens abruptly. “I mean—I mean—red is a nice color. In general. Yeah.”

“Red is… nice,” Spotpaw says slowly, taking him in. His fur has spiked oddly, eyes darting everywhere but at her; when she shoves up against him playfully, he nearly falls back into the drift he’d just popped out of. “Are you okay?”

“Never better!” Stempaw squeaks. His ginger ears flick back and forth rapidly. “Anyway, long story short—”

“Too _late_ —”

“—we should bring back the traditions of Graystripe’s youth! He’s like, the oldest cat in the Clans—”

“What about Mis—”

“—so cats should do what he says. Probably. Maybe. We definitely shouldn’t have cross-Clan relationships. Or so he says. But he was _in_ one so _he’s_ one to talk—”

“Stempaw—”

“—and it’s not like he doesn’t talk about my aunt and uncle _every_ _time_ I go into the elder’s den. It’s like I have to hear about Feathertail sacrificing herself for the Tribe as some sort of daily ritual to get to the good stories. Not that Feathertail wasn’t awesome, but like, I’ve heard that story a million-bajillion tim—”

“ _Stempaw!_ ”

“What?! Oh, sorry,” the mostly-ginger tom has the courtesy to look at least slightly sheepish as he breaks off. “But I was thinking we could decorate! The camp, I mean, because—”

Spotpaw sighs.

—— 

“Spotpaw! Look! A winter hare!”

Stempaw’s voice, of course, startles the rabbit from the bush it’d been sniffing in, white fur tearing across white snow with only churned pawsteps marking its path.

Spotpaw feels a flash of irritation, sharp and acrid, but Stempaw is already making a regretful sound and tearing after the hare, flattened nearly impossibly to the snow below him.

And—and—he _catches_ it, somehow, does a complicated turn and snags it in his jaws, and then looks at her like he needs her forgiveness and approval all in one.

She huffs, irritation melting into reluctant amusement. “Good catch,” she says.

Stempaw beams.

——

Stempaw looks ridiculous with his head stuck in an ice-encrusted bush. He’s got a vine in his jaws he’s trying to work loose from the branches, and Spotpaw is playing observer, glancing nervously at the border they’re only mousesteps from crossing.

“A little help here?” comes Stempaw’s muffled voice, distorted around the vine.

“I think you’re doing a great job on your own,” Spotpaw says, choosing instead to inspect her snow-covered pawpads.

Stempaw makes a sound akin to rolling one’s eyes. Spotpaw laughs. There’s a beat of silence, comfortable despite the biting cold of the snow, until Stempaw manages to pull the vine free. Spotpaw gasps as he crashes into her, unable to stop his vine-pulling momentum in its tracks. Both cats roll over the SkyClan border, spitting and laughing and tangled in vines.

 _StarClan_ , Spotpaw thinks breathlessly. _Th_ _is tom is going to be the death of me_.

——

“So do you think you can get that jay?” Stempaw asks, gaze locked onto a startlingly cerulean bluejay, high in an oak. “Jayfeather wouldn’t snark at us for a week. He loves jays—”

“—something about the irony of a Jay eating a jay,” Spotpaw finishes. “I know, I know.”

“So can you?”

“I guess I’m going to need that lack of snark,” Spotpaw sighs, already considering her angles, “when I’m in his den with greencough after all of this.”

Stempaw grins. “That’s the spirit, Spotpaw! At least you’ll get it in the right season.”

——

“Why are we hiding?” Spotpaw hisses as Thornclaw passes with the sunhigh patrol. The tom looks disturbingly content to be leading cats through shoulder-high snow. His compatriots look decidedly less so.

“Wintertide spirit,” Stempaw says for the millionth time, voice lower than a mouse’s breath. What did that _mean_? “They can’t know our position.”

“ _Why_?”

“Wintertide spirit,” he says for the million-and-first time, watching closely as Hollyleaf’s black tail swishes past them.

“This explains _nothing_ ,” Spotpaw says, exasperated, as Stempaw heaves himself out of the old rabbit set they’d squeezed themselves into. “And I’m pretty sure you’ve made wintertide up.”

“Spotpaw, you _wound_ me,” her companion says loftily. “It’s not my fault that you’d rather clean your ears than listen to the wisdom of our elders.”

Hollyleaf, almost out of sight, twitches an ear and looks back. Unconsciously, Spotpaw presses Stempaw into the nearest bush, both cats holding their breath until Thornclaw’s gruff voice calls the she-cat away.

“I _knew_ you had wintertide spirit!” Stempaw crows a moment later, voice quiet but strained, as if he’d rather be shouting the sentiment loudly enough to startle a RiverClan patrol.

“What does that even _mean?!_ ”

——-

“I have a bad feeling about these branches,” Spotpaw says idly, tilting her head to get a better look at the snow-encrusted needles.

“What could possibly be bad about these?” Stempaw asks, his head already deep into the branches. “They’re so nice and—” Stempaw cuts off with a yelp, pulling his head from the bush as if it had burned him.

“Are you okay?”

“Spider,” Stempaw says. “Massive spider. _Huge_ spider. Spider the size of a pheasant. Spider.”

Spotpaw purrs. “Afraid of a little ol’ spider?” she asks teasingly, nudging him with her shoulder. “It can’t be all that bad.”

“It’s really, really bad,” Stempaw promises, shuddering. 

He pushes at her shoulder, trying to lead her away, but Spotpaw holds firm. “Don’t be silly,” she says, pushing her own head into the bush and _oh StarClan that is a massive spider holy—_ “Run!” she yelps as the spider rears back, all fangs and gangly horrible limbs.

If they fall back over the SkyClan border again, screeching and yowling and carrying on, at least the sunhigh patrol is long past.

——

“Sunnypelt!” Stempaw cries out around an entire pine branch. He’s waving his tail excitedly, bouncing on his paws as if they hadn’t been trespassing on SkyClan land at least twice that day already.

Sunnypelt starts from where she’s huddled into a hunting crouch, her bright fur puffed out ridiculously against the cold. “Stempaw!” she greets back, purring. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

“Not trespassing, that’s for sure.”

“ _Stempaw,_ ” Spotpaw hisses through her teeth, holding steady in what she hopes is a passable pleasant-greeting sort of posture. “Don’t mind him,” she says louder for Sunnypelt’s benefit.

“I never do,” says Sunnypelt blithely. There’s a squirrel at her paws that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago. Spotpaw chooses not to ask.

Unfortunately, Stempaw is too nosy for his own good. “How’d you catch that squirrel?”

“A tree taught me,” Sunnypelt purrs. “How’d you catch that fir branch?”

“A… tree taught me,” Stempaw jokes back, though he _definitely_ didn’t understand the original joke.

Spotpaw nudges him away.

——

The lake is frozen. Frozen-frozen, with a thick layer of snow on top, broken only by pawprints of curious prey. And cats. Including—and perhaps limited to—Stempaw.

The ginger-and-white tom stands tall on the surface of the lake, declaring himself Stemstar, leader of LakeClan. And trying to entice her into becoming his deputy.

“—there’s no cat more capable than you, Spotstorm, to be deputy of this Clan.”

Spotpaw snorts from where she’s sitting underneath a pine, close to the shore but not _too_ close. “What are we going to do when the lake thaws, mousebrain?”

“That is a mountain we will cross when we get to it!” Stempaw declares, puffing out his chest. “But I assume we’ll learn to breathe underwater.”

“Sounds fishy.”

“Wow,” Stempaw grins. “She has a sense of humor after all! Now she’ll make an even more perfect deputy for LakeClan!”

“I’ve always had a sense of humor,” Spotpaw says, quasi-seriously. “It’s just that snow is humorless.”

“You take that back!” Stempaw calls teasingly, his loud purring almost making the words unintelligible.

“What are you going to do, revoke my position as LakeClan’s noble deputy?”

Stempaw starts toward her, and she doesn’t realize quite what’s happening until he’s tackling her into a drift, all bright fur and bright eyes and bright, uproarious laughter.

——

“Hey, check it out!” Stempaw’s face is pointed up up _up_ , toward the tops of the highest oaks.

Spotpaw follows his gaze to where the limbs wave in the wind, snow mostly melted or blown away. “No,” she says. “Not a chance.”

“Oh, c’mon, Spotpaw. It’ll be great!”

“It’s mistletoe,” she says. “It’s never great.”

“So you _were_ listening to Graystripe!”

Spotpaw snorts. “I never said I wasn’t,” she tells him. “It’s not my fault that you can’t listen while washing your ears.”

“What have I missed to my overgrown ear fur?” Stempaw questions dramatically.

“That’s just it,” Spotpaw says, sizing up one of the trees. “You’ll never know.”

“So many stories lost to lucious ear fur! So many days wasted grooming it when I should have had Jayfeather cut it out with a sharp rock—!”

“He’d have taken your ears off,” Spotpaw purrs. “He can do a lot of things, but I wouldn’t recommend having a blind cat trim your fur.”

“Should have had Alderheart cut it out with a sharp rock!” Stempaw corrects, staggering exaggeratedly into a nearby boulder. “Oh, woe is me—”

“Oh, shush,” Spotpaw purrs. “You’re coming with me or we’re not getting mistletoe.”

She doesn’t expect him to deny her condition, and she isn’t disappointed. He grins, warm and soft and competitive all the same, and starts up a tree.

“Hey!” she calls after him. “It’s not a race!”

“You snooze, you lose!” 

——

There are areas in the old Twoleg den untouched by the snow, but Spotpaw doesn’t feel quite inclined to relax in the relative warmth they provide. Instead, she’s nosing through frostbitten and snow-covered plants with Stempaw, searching out catmint to take back to camp.

“If there’s enough,” Stempaw says brightly, “Jayfeather might let us put some into the moss balls to play with.”

Spotpaw blinks, pulling back from a plant with a few bits of relatively-untouched catmint held tight in her jaws. “That seems like a waste of good herbs,” she says around the bundle. “Shouldn’t we save it?”

Stempaw shrugs. “That’s the thing about survival, Spotpaw,” he says so seriously that she’s taken aback. “What use is living without being able to enjoy it once in a while?”

They’re quiet for a few moments, Stempaw regarding her with such warmth that she almost feels she’ll burn up in it. He’s right, in a way— _this life is more about surviving to fight the next battle than taking pleasure in the little things, the good and beautiful and happy moments that we don’t really stop to experience_ , she thinks. ... _Like snow_?

“I guess you’re right,” she says, banishing the thought. “It’s good to have a little fun now and again.”

They’re silent for another few moments, watching as a pair of geese honk their way across the blue, blue sky.

“Are _you_ having fun?” Stempaw asks. His voice is serious and his gaze is serious, and all together it’s incredibly wrong. Stempaw is supposed to be warmth, and happiness, and _life_ , and seeing him so concerned with her own happiness is—wonderful, actually, in a strange, electrifying sort of way.

Spotpaw shakes the thoughts away, flicking a paw coated with snow in his general direction. “Wouldn’t _you_ like to know, snow boy.”

He rears back, surprise giving way to joy. And with that, _she_ tackles _him_ into the snow.

——

They amass quite the pile of decorations between the two of them over the course of the afternoon, including two large bundles of mistletoe dropped from treetops. Spotpaw has also managed to catch not one, but _three_ blue jays, and their bright blue feathers stand stark against the mostly-green pile. The cardinal, of course, is hers and hers alone, but she doesn’t mind if the blue feathers end up in other nests. _Well_. She supposes not.

Now they’re lugging what Stempaw’s calling his ‘all-important _Yule Log_ , Spotpaw, I thought you said you were paying attention to Graystripe!’ through the snow to their pile, from where they’ll convince the other apprentices to lug it all back to camp.

“Plumstone’ll help too,” Stempaw says as they ease the Yule Log down onto the pile. It’s really more of a large stick, and maybe they’ll find a better one with all the apprentices to help, but it’s as large as two nearly-grown cats can haul, so she’s feeling pretty proud of it all the same. “And maybe Eaglewing. Definitely not Shellfur. He likes the snow less than you do.”

 _I’m not so sure if I dislike the snow anymore_ , Spotpaw thinks, but voices something else instead. “Why did you want me to come with you?”

Stempaw’s head shoots up from where he’s sniffing at one of the white-furred hares he’s managed to catch. “What?”

“I mean…” Spotpaw hesitates. “You asked me along. Before Rosepetal and Leafshade more-or-less ordered me. And you were so disappointed when I didn’t want to come.”

Something in Stempaw’s face crumples, and he looks away, gaze trailing long-since-destroyed snowdrifts and sharp, drooping icicles. “Spotpaw,” he says quietly, shuffling from paw to paw for a long moment, ears pinned back and pelt ruffled. He looks handsome like this, his ginger patches sunny against the disturbed powder of the snow, and Spotpaw doesn’t bother with pushing the thoughts down. “I’m sorry.”

This is not what she expected to hear. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you out here. You were so miserable at first, and...” the tom dips his mostly-ginger head to his mostly-white chest, looking ashamed, “I haven’t been a very good friend. I should have let you go back to camp, not dragged you around in— _”_ Stempaw gestures heavily to the snow and ice and dead-looking trees, still not meeting her eyes, “— _t_ _his_.”

“Stempaw,” Spotpaw starts.

“I just wanted you to like the snow as much as I do,” Stempaw confesses. “I think you’re really great, and I thought we could have fun—that I could convince you the snow wasn’t bad, but that was wrong of me, I shouldn’t hav—”

“Stempaw,” Spotpaw insists, because maybe she didn’t want to be here at first, but this may have ended up as the best day of her _life_ , but she doesn’t finish. She moves toward him without looking, without caring that they’re on the edge of the ridge that plunges toward the lake and SkyClan territory—he looks devastated, and she _has_ to comfort him, and so when she headbutts him softly and he nudges her roughly— _gratefully—_ in return, she’s not as careful as she should have been.

Her back paw hits the Yule Log, and she’s stumbling—and falling, head over tail, through snow and dead ferns and bright red berries, until she comes to a frigid, sliding stop amongst a holly bush. Spotpaw spits leaves, gasping for breath that isn’t there as Stempaw’s scrambling grows nearer. “Spotpaw!” he calls, but she has no breath to answer with; he curses as he trips over something she can’t see, and she can’t even laugh. Her cardinal is utterly destroyed: the bird’s feathers are scattered up to the top of the ridge she’d fallen down, looking like spring petals poking up through melting ice.

“Oh, StarClan, Spotpaw, I’m so sorry,” Stempaw rushes as he pokes his head into the bush, his ears pinned flat and his green eyes impossibly large on his face. “I-I didn’t think you’d stumble back, or fall, but I should’ve, Spot, I should’ve thought, I’m such a mousebrain, are you okay? Should I get help? Should I—”

“You _foxheart_ ,” Spotpaw finally spits, and she’s so, so cold, covered in ice and snow and holly leaves, but then she breaks into a laugh and Stempaw joins her, and they laugh and laugh and suddenly Spotpaw can’t remember ever being so warm.

Their laughter peters off as the sun dies, painting warm colors across the clearings and the snow-flecked pines, the narrow creaking branches and leafless oaks. It’s an odd kind of beautiful, quiet and loud, the snow a hushing white painted over by riotous reds and oranges, and Spotpaw can’t help but think that it’s beautiful.

Stempaw tucks into her side, all gangly limbs and short fur and impossible warmth, and Spotpaw lets herself lean into him as he grooms the ice from her ears. Here, with him, in the shelter of holly berries and under the light of the dying sun, she can’t help but make a decision. “I was wrong, Stempaw.”

Stempaw pauses in his work, peering down at her curiously, and Spotpaw blinks happily up at him.

“The snow is beautiful,” she clarifies. “And I do want to be here, Stempaw. More than anything. I wouldn’t trade a thousand greenleaf days for today, I promise." She pauses for a moment, pensive; a cardinal feather flutters past her, and she smiles. "There’s… there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Leaf-bare’s not so bad, after all. Not when I have you.”

Stempaw’s answering purr could melt a thousand leaf-bares, but somehow… somehow she thinks maybe this one can stay.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this done for a while but was too nervous to post it. SO HERE WE ARE, on the final day of entries, trying to work up the courage to hit 'post'. I haven't actually written anything in years please don't hurt me I did my best?
> 
> We're deciding that cats can grin, laugh, shrug, and say things instead of mew them. Among other things that they can't do in Warriors and DEFINITELY can't do in life.
> 
> Also -- we're pretending that Kate Cary's Longest Night oneshot was canon but that the practice never made it to the lake territories. We're... pretending a lot of things, really. Please don't think too hard on it?
> 
> Also, Hollyleaf lives and ends up mentoring Bristlefrost because I think it would be interesting and also she should have lived in the first place, I don't make the rules. This isn't at all relevant to the story besides the one appearance Hollyleaf makes, but I wanted you all to know anyway.
> 
> Uh, I hope you enjoyed? I'm so incredibly nervous?


End file.
